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Friday, June 20, 2008

"Also note this: secularism thrives in an environment that is economically strong, where good education is the norm. Faith thrives on economic uncertainty, and grows best in ignorance. Guess which one of those conditions is easiest to generate and maintain? Cultivating a healthy society that can grow and sustain itself, with a well-informed democratic populace, is hard work. Producing an economic rathole inhabited by frightened sheep is easy — elect a few incompetent leaders, throw away resources on futile, bloody projects, and unchain rapacious business interests to exploit short-term personal gains at the cost of sustainability, and you've got a recipe for a fast slide back into the dark ages."

The quote is from Pharyngula but could so easily have been describing our current government and situation.

The article also refers to the following very interesting interview by Bill Moyers

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

It seems that this was my week for doing charity drives, Friday evening found both Caron and myself at a quiz evening at samuel and hannah's school helping to raise funds for the school. Maybe I should put it a different way, we were there so that the school had the opportunity to pick our collective pockets. Our table consisted of 6 women and 2 men which might explain why we did relatively well - out of the 18 teams we placed third which one can't help but feel pleased about. Better still, there were prizes for coming third - the very best kind of prizes as well; alcohol and chocolate.

I had a very strange experience on thursday night last week. Kim and Laurel invited me to go and see Graeme Codrington talk at a charity fund raiser which, having no idea of who exactly he was, landed me in the Rosebank Union church. I haven't been in a church for a good many years now and it was quite strange to be back but in some ways, it was like I had never been away. The manner of the MC and the analogies and stories that he used were old 15 years ago, it was a bit like being in a time warp.We had just sat down and there was "Hello Roland" from the row behind from someone that, although I recognised the face, for the life of me I couldn't remember a name. If I looked to the left and the right, there were people I knew so not only did the topics remain static but the people seem to have been pretty static as well.The speech entitled "Hannah's Rules" by Graeme Codrington was quite good in the way he packaged the message that he was trying to get across. There wasn't anything really new in what he said and I really hope it wasn't news to the majority of people in the audience but it was nicely put together and every little bit of exposure helps. Hannah's rules comes from graeme's daughter who, although young, is already concerned with the environment and the ethics of people who damage the environment and she is just typical of the new generation of consumers and employees. If you, as a business person, want to remain in business in the coming years you need to recognise that the people you are going to be employing and selling your goods and services to are going to hold you to a different ethical scale to the one that you are used to. Be prepared for them or be irrelevant. Even better, being prepared for them can actually save you money in the here and now.